We'll probably be hearing more about PlanetSide 2 soon, as John Smedley tweets that the NDA has lifted for the MMOFPS sequel (thanks Blahman), saying simply: "The NDA for the Planetside 2 beta is now officially lifted." He also clarifies once and again that this does not mean they are about to release the game.

Haven't played for about a week....game has a lot of balance issues that get really irritating.

Some of them may be fixed now, but a quick list:

- Drop pods instantly kill anything you land on, friendly planes, enemy planes, tanks, people, etc. They added spawn beacons which cut down on the ability to drop on any squad member willy nilly, but people were literally killing galaxies worth of people every 5 minutes EACH with just 3-4 people in a squad... and bragging like it was some kind of grand joke.

- AA is ineffectual, while anti-ground from air is deadly as hell. It's hard to hit the planes because the bullets drop off so quickly you can't hit planes unless they are very close. They added some Auraxium bought weapons for heavy and MAX that may make this less retarded trying to shoot down planes, but was too expensive to try them myself.

- Some MAX units seem to have good AV weapon by default, while others have piss poor ones. BS AV seems to be good, while TR AV has low damage and 5 shot clips. You can barely kill infantry with it before you need to reload which means you die...better to stick with chain guns. NC jackhammers were instant kills on most infantry in comparison. Don't ask me how they came up with the balance they did on MAX suits, it makes no sense whatsoever.

- Right now by default the classes have special abilities that look like they should be cert point bought. So the experience you have now may be the same experience you have when you fully cert into these abilities. Like the heavy shield ability, medic heal, inf cloaking. Or somewhere in between. However if these are the maximum effect aspects of the abilities, the classes are weak in comparison to the MAX...like stupidly weak. The MAX units don't have enough drawbacks to discourage use if this is how much stronger they are supposed to be. They can't drive, can't gun in lib bomb position...can't be revived or healed by medic. But that means you could load up a gal with all MAX minus the driver.

- No trial system for weapons, so you spend real life money or auraxium on guns that may end up being completely useless. The grenade on top of tanks is useless as hell. You pretty much have to direct hit guys to hurt them with it. PLUS, Zoom certs often don't work on secondary guns......which again makes them useless to use if you're trying to shoot infantry/planes you can barely see if you can manage to compensate for bullet drop off.

- I don't care for the having to buy grenades to use. This is a stupid system, and I suspect it's indicative of what their pay system is going to end up being. That you will eventually be unable to supply yourself with various kinds of weaponry because they want everything to bought with Auraxium/Station Cash. So you will be limited to what you can afford to by instead of what you can cert eventually.

- Station Cash system isn't in yet, nor is most of the items in the shop. But I think it's going to be expensive basing it off the rate of Auraxium you earn and what stuff costs. 12.5k for tracking rocket launcher, when you get maybe 2-3k auraxium a day if you play extreme amounts of time. Then Max guns cost 8k, AA launcher costs around 12k. Plus all the vehicle guns, some of which cost 12k+ maybe more. And a host of implants (temporary 24 hour implants, retarded as hell) and other guns that aren't priced yet.

- Base lock down upon capture is 5 minutes, usually this isn't even enough time to clear out the enemies before it's capturable again. So you literally get stuck at a base until you just say screw it and move on. Now with the hex system, I suspect this will result in all day fights at one location. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it gets kinda old only being able to see 10-20% of the map because the way the system is designed.

Nighthawk wrote on Sep 1, 2012, 08:20:I've got a 10 hours played (http://raptr.com/grady450 )and have put a decent ammount of time into all the classes. Never played the first one.It's good, although a little unbalanced with the factions, a lot of people seem to be avoiding the Vanu Sovereignty for some reason, and have to learn how to multi crew vehicles (taking a liberator bomber and flying off with nobody else? that lets you have a gun, no bombs).The gameplay is good, performance has improved, but people are going to be the problem.

In the first one, tanks required a gunner to shoot. All you could do was drive.

I've got a 10 hours played (http://raptr.com/grady450 )and have put a decent ammount of time into all the classes. Never played the first one.It's good, although a little unbalanced with the factions, a lot of people seem to be avoiding the Vanu Sovereignty for some reason, and have to learn how to multi crew vehicles (taking a liberator bomber and flying off with nobody else? that lets you have a gun, no bombs).The gameplay is good, performance has improved, but people are going to be the problem.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2012, 00:37:Game just had my computer going apeshit... after 20 minutes of playing, I was driving along in a tank and objects/textures were failing to load... then I randomly died, the deployment screen wouldnt come up, I was kicked to a loading screen that stuck at 100%, Windows was unresponsive, and when I was finally forced to reset my computer (something no program has ever made me do in Win7) BIOS failed to pick up my bootdisk until I restarted again. I have a bad feeling about this.

Unless its a type of malware, a game isnt going to be causing your bootdrive to fail, or for that matter completely lock up windows 7. Get ready for epic hardware failure, its coming.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2012, 00:37:Game just had my computer going apeshit... after 20 minutes of playing, I was driving along in a tank and objects/textures were failing to load... then I randomly died, the deployment screen wouldnt come up, I was kicked to a loading screen that stuck at 100%, Windows was unresponsive, and when I was finally forced to reset my computer (something no program has ever made me do in Win7) BIOS failed to pick up my bootdisk until I restarted again. I have a bad feeling about this.

In... omfg, ~19, is it 20? years (fuuuuuuck!) of PC gaming, anytime I have even heard of remotely similar issues it has been the PC causing the problem, not the other way around, with IIRC the sole exception of the securom shit.

Shit, securom was Sony, wasn't it?

Well okay, my argument is invalid, but I'd still bet the money on this not being the game.

Sepharo wrote on Aug 31, 2012, 23:31:Just played for a few hours. I mostly played heavy assault and MAX but I briefly played every class and hopped in most of the vehicles. The UI is a bit overwhelming at first but I'm picking it up. Also I've got a bunch of points to spend on various upgrades but I can't decide where to use them. It's definitely something where I worry about wasting them and instead (probably more damaging) don't spend any at all.

^ = the very definition of a complete and utter n00b who should be playing Barbie Adventures instead of r3aL gamez liek PS2 BAHAHAAA

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2012, 00:37:Game just had my computer going apeshit... after 20 minutes of playing, I was driving along in a tank and objects/textures were failing to load... then I randomly died, the deployment screen wouldnt come up, I was kicked to a loading screen that stuck at 100%, Windows was unresponsive, and when I was finally forced to reset my computer (something no program has ever made me do in Win7) BIOS failed to pick up my bootdisk until I restarted again. I have a bad feeling about this.

I think it was more that your boot drive had the game going apeshit. I'd backup anything on that drive that I wanted to keep and then do some deep tests on it. Hiren's is good for that sort of thing.

Game just had my computer going apeshit... after 20 minutes of playing, I was driving along in a tank and objects/textures were failing to load... then I randomly died, the deployment screen wouldnt come up, I was kicked to a loading screen that stuck at 100%, Windows was unresponsive, and when I was finally forced to reset my computer (something no program has ever made me do in Win7) BIOS failed to pick up my bootdisk until I restarted again. I have a bad feeling about this.

Just played for a few hours. I mostly played heavy assault and MAX but I briefly played every class and hopped in most of the vehicles. The UI is a bit overwhelming at first but I'm picking it up. Also I've got a bunch of points to spend on various upgrades but I can't decide where to use them. It's definitely something where I worry about wasting them and instead (probably more damaging) don't spend any at all.